Amber Pritchard, Author at Arrow Child & Family Ministries

Instead of getting birthday presents from her friends, Emma Showalter decided to use her ninth birthday as an opportunity to collect books for Arrow foster children.

Emma said she got the idea after seeing the film Annie. The movie sparked a conversation about foster care between Emma and her mom, Jennifer Showalter. After discussing some of the difficulties kids in foster care face, Emma asked her mom “So what do we do? Do we just wish them well and send them on their way?”

That comment lead to a discussion about ways to help children in foster care, and eventually, Emma decided that she would use her upcoming birthday to collect books for Arrow foster kids.

Emma collected more than 100 books for the kids, and made bookmarks. She set up a table at the Spring office’s back to school event, where the kids could come and pick out a book and bookmark of their own.

“I liked giving out the books and bookmarks,” Emma said. “It was fun to see how excited the kids were when they got a book to keep.”

Thanks so much to the Showalter family! Emma’s heart for giving has truly inspired us.

The TODAY Show recently wrote an awesome article for their website featuring an Arrow family! Seventeen-year-old Breanna was recently adopted by her foster parents, Fred and Diane Shaw. The Shaws were empty-nesters before they welcomed Breanna into their home, and at first they were nervous about fostering a teen. However, Fred and Diane soon realized they had nothing to be scared of! They love being Breanna’s parents, and Breanna is so happy to have a family to call her own. Read the full TODAY article below!

Before Diane Shaw met her daughter, Breanna, she wasn’t sure she was ready to foster a teen.

Having become empty nesters after raising four children of their own, Diane and her husband knew they faced “a major life change” in welcoming Breanna and her brother into their home.

“I was so nervous… to have two teens in the house I didn’t know,” Diane recalled.

But on Breanna’s first visit, any anxieties Diane had about fostering simply melted away.

“I couldn’t stop smiling, and whenever [Breanna and her brother] turned their backs, I’d mouth to my husband that I loved them,” Diane said.

Diane and her husband, Fred, adopted 17 year-old Breanna in May, four years after that first encounter.

“It was the best day of my life,” said Breanna of her Adoption Day. “I have a family all my own… and I know they’re not going to ever give up on me.”

The Shaws celebrated their special day in the courtroom with a photo inspired by Together We Rise, a foster care advocacy group that shares Adoption Day photos (also known as “gotcha day” photos) to increase awareness of adopting through foster care.

With more than 100,000 children in foster care still waiting for permanent homes, an adoption such as Breanna’s is more than just a family milestone. It’s a sign that attitudes about adopting from foster care are starting to shift.

Americans now have a more favorable opinion of foster care adoption than of international adoption or private infant adoption, according to a 2013 study by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

However, more than half of Americans still wrongly believe that children in the foster care system are juvenile delinquents, the study also revealed. In fact, children enter foster care because of abuse, neglect and/or abandonment at the hands of their biological family.

Between their unfair reputation for being “bad kids” and the misconceptions many families have about adoption in general, many foster care children are still struggling to find forever homes.

Here are six of the most pervasive myths about adopting from foster care, deconstructed by adoptive families and experts alike:

1. You’ll end up fostering/adopting more than one child

There’s a fear that if you become involved with the foster care system, “they’re going to twist your arm and you’ll come home with a carful of kids,” explained Rita Soronen, CEO and President of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.In reality, Soronen said, “[foster care] agencies for the most part err on the side of caution.” Agencies don’t want to overwhelm new foster parents, or place children in homes where they won’t get the attention they need.

“You have the power over your family… you say yes or no,” said Kristina Wilmoth, an active foster parent. She and her husband, Josh, adopted their son Jasper after having two biological children of their own.

2. All foster care kids have medical or behavioral needs that make them difficult to parent

Only one-third of the children in foster care have any kind of diagnosable disability, according to a report from United Cerebral Palsy and Children’s Rights.

Many other children are classified by the state as having “special needs,” but not for the reasons you might think. The term simply refers to a condition that makes the child harder to find a home, such as being older or part of a sibling group.

“That doesn’t mean that [these children] are any more difficult to parent,” said Soronen. “They’ve just had a rough start in life, and they need a family.”

Breanna Shaw, for example, “fell under the category of special needs, even though there was nothing mentally or physically that she needed help with,” explained her adoptive mother, Diane.

On the contrary: Bre is “a huge reader and a great speaker” and is doing well in school, said Diane.

Even when a child’s “special needs” are impossible to predict, families don’t have to give up hope of a happy ending.

Caring for their soon-to-be son, Waylon, during his four months in the NICU, Dan and Lindsey Jenkins weren’t sure if he would have cognitive deficits or other health problems as a result of being premature. In the end, Lindsey said, it didn’t matter.

“We didn’t care… we just grew to love him,” Lindsey Jenkins explained.

As it turns out, “he’s actually proven to be mostly healthy and physically sound,” said Dan. “We call [Waylon] our little miracle baby.”

3. There’s a higher cost than adopting from overseas

“People believe that because it’s expensive to adopt internationally or to adopt through a private agency…it’s also expensive to adopt from foster care. It’s not,” Soronen explained.”It costs virtually nothing.”

In fact, the average cost of adopting from foster care is less than $2,500, and up to $2,000 may be covered by the state. Families may also receive monthly maintenance payments and financial aid for their child’s college education.

“We were under no financial burden at any time,” said Dan Jenkins of his son Waylon’s adoption. But even “if it cost a million dollars to have the little boy we have now, we would have done it.”

4. It’s not worth the risk of having to say goodbye

As with any form of adoption — or really, any method of becoming a parent — there are no guarantees. But some worry that the emotional toll of adopting from foster care is too high, as they may lose their child to a biological relative months or years into the adoption process.

Adoptive parents say the wait was tough — but entirely worth it.

“Sometimes I felt like I would keep my heart guarded, just in case,” said Kristina Wilmoth, remembering the time before she and her husband were granted custody of their son Jasper. But “once they get adopted, it’s like you gave birth to them.”

Plus, fostering a child is “so important, and you do get so many rewards out of it,” said Lindsey Wery, adoptive mom to 4 year-old Annie. “I wasn’t a parent before, and now I am.”

“I look back and wonder what I was so worried about,” added Dan Jenkins. “[Our] little boy has benefited our lives in more ways than we can put into words. The reward far outweighs the risk.”

5. You have to build a relationship with the birth parents and/or relatives

“No adoptive family is required to have a relationship with the biological family,” said Soronen. “Once you’re an adoptive family, you make the legal decisions for [your] child.”

Soronen recommends staying touch with the birth family only “if it’s safe and if it’s appropriate,” as every situation is different.

Dan and Lindsey Jenkins, parents to 2-year-old Waylon, are in contact with a few of their son’s relatives, as well as his biological brother.

“As he gets older and wants to know them, he deserves to,” said Lindsey.

Josh and Kristina Wilmoth feel similarly. But when interacting with their son Jasper’s biological parents, they’ve tried to establish certain boundaries.

We’re “very clear that [Jasper] is my child… [and] that my husband is ‘Dad,'” explained Kristina.

Breanna Shaw, meanwhile, is only in touch with her siblings. As for the rest of her biological family, she said, “I prefer not to talk to them.”

“I feel like I have a family here,” Breanna added. “I just prefer to move forward.”

6. If you adopt an older child instead of an infant, they’ll never feel like “yours”

“That’s just so wrong,” said Soronen. “There’s just no reason to think that adopting an older youth — whether they’re nine or 16 — isn’t worth the effort.”

Breanna Shaw remembers how anxious the idea of being adopted made her at first, after a nearly lifetime of moving between different homes.

“Rationally, I knew they loved me… But there’s always that small voice that says, ‘Are they going to love me enough?'” said Breanna.

Meanwhile, Breanna’s adoptive parents, Diane and Fred Shaw, were concerned about being able to provide adequate support.

We wondered, “‘Are we going to be enough for her? Are we going to be enough to help her heal?'” Diane recalled.

But these days, Breanna told TODAY, she feels completely at home.

“It takes a lot of being vulnerable [to be adopted], but it’s worth it,” Breanna said. “It’s the best feeling in the world, being loved.”

Blogger Maralee Bradley generously allowed us to share her blog about a very common concern among prospective foster parents– becoming attached to a child who will most likely leave. Bradley does a wonderful job explaining that building trust (and thus, becoming “attached”) is exactly what a foster child needs in this very vulnerable time in their life.

I remember the wonder I felt when my son Joel was a tiny newborn and I realized just my presence could comfort him. He would cry. I would pick him up. He would stop crying. It seemed like a miracle to me. I hadn’t done anything special, hadn’t started singing a soothing lullaby or offered him a bottle, I had just picked him up and he was at peace. I felt just as startled when my son Teddy was a week old and was crying while I put him down for a minute so I could get dressed. I called out to him, “It’s okay! Mommy is here!” and he stopped crying. It was so odd to me that just the sound of my voice could reassure him he was safe.

I imagine other mothers may not be as surprised to find they are capable of comforting their children. Other mothers may even expect their babies will quiet when they are picked up or will be soothed by hearing their mother’s voice. Probably because other mothers weren’t initiated into this whole parenting gig via adoption and foster care.

Joel and Teddy are the sons I grew in my body. They heard my voice for 40 weeks. They know my heartbeat, the way I pace the floor when I’m on the phone, the arguing voices of their siblings, the way the dog barks when someone knocks at the door. These boys know my smell, my sounds, my rhythm. They are hardwired to trust me and in some ways it takes minimal effort to establish that I am trustworthy.

This is not the case when you are a stranger to the child you love. I have spent long hours bouncing a baby who was terrified of me– a white face when he had only known brown. I have fed a baby who only felt safe enough to eat when she was turned away from me because she wasn’t used to being held while she ate. I have loved children who spent their prenatal lives being subjected to toxic substances, listening to the sounds of domestic violence happening around them, or the cold sterile noises of prison life. They have been programed to love and trust someone who ended up being untrustworthy and they fear the love of the stranger doing the midnight feedings and changing their diapers. When they cry and you pick them up, they are not comforted.

It is a long process to establish trust. It means being a calm presence to a frightened child. It means putting aside your desire to be liked or to have your love reciprocated. It may mean days or weeks or months of being the only one to meet that child’s needs so they learn you are the one they can trust. It may not come simply or naturally or easily. But when it does come, it is overwhelmingly beautiful.

The first time that child falls asleep in your arms or gazes into your eyes while you feed them or comes to you for a hug when they’re scared, it is a feeling of joy and accomplishment that is uniquely special. Being trusted by your foster or adopted child is not something that was just naturally given to you, it was something you earned through all the hours of love and consistent care you invested in this child.

But in the case of foster children, why do you want them to learn to trust you if eventually they will have to leave you? It’s a question every foster parent struggles with. I do all the work, but eventually I will be untrustworthy too, when a judge decides this child should leave my home. Is it worth all the work? Will I end up hurting this child more by creating an attachment that has to be severed?

The beautiful thing is that trust is a learned skill. When we invest in children and teach them to trust by being trustworthy, they can transfer that attachment to other trustworthy adults. We have given kids the gift of attachment when we pour ourselves into them. They will grieve when they leave us, but they have developed the capacity to love and trust again. This has huge implications for their ability to love a spouse, parent their own children some day, even create friendships and have a stable job. We have the ability to give them the start they need to learn to accept love when it is offered and relate to others in healthy ways.

I know this is true because I watched it happen with my own child. My firstborn son had to grieve the loss of an orphanage nanny he was attached to, but was able to learn how to trust me at the end of that process. By loving and attaching to this baby, she gave him the ability to love and attach to me. But I know it came at a cost to her.

When we worry about if it’s worth it to develop trust with a foster child, I think there’s another worry we’re not talking about. We’re worried for ourselves. We hear people say they could never be a foster parent because they would get “too attached” and while we may roll our eyes at that, we also know the reality– getting too attached is exactly what this child needs from us, and it’s also the very thing that will break our heart.

Creating attachment and teaching a child to trust is a difficult process. When we succeed, we rejoice. And when that child has to leave us, we grieve. These are not choices we make because they are easiest or make the most sense. They are the choices we make because we we want to do what’s right. We know these children didn’t choose this road, but we can choose to make it easier for them, even if that means life is harder for us.

To learn more about becoming a foster parent, visit www.arrow.org/foster.

Maralee’s other writing can be found on her website, www.amusingmaralee.com.

Back Hands Flowers — The sisters hold hands at a neighborhood park.

From a young age, adoptive mother Shelley grasped a concept that some seem to struggle with—foster kids are just “normal” children.

When she was a little girl, her neighbor was a foster mother, so she frequently befriended the foster children and helped outwith the babies. Years later, Shelley remembered those experiences as she considered becoming a mother through adoption.

“I knew there were so many kids out there… good kids, in need of homes,” Shelley said.

With that in mind, Shelley and her husband decided that they would be a perfect fit to adopt a sibling group. After completing their training as foster-to-adopt parents, Shelley and her husband were eventually selected for 3 and 4-year-old sisters.

The day they met Emma and Anna at a neighborhood park, the family instantly clicked. The girls had been with an Arrow foster family prior to Shelley, and the foster parents, along with a counselor, had prepared them to meet their adoptive family. The oldest, Emma*, talked about wanting to come to Shelley’s house, and how she wanted her own mommy and daddy. She also insisted that she wanted a “princess family,” so as Shelley prepared Emma’s Life Book (a special scrap book for foster children), she wrote it as a fairy tale.

“It was just amazing,” Shelley said. “It was unreal. They were so perfect and ready.”

That’s not to say there weren’t obstacles.

Anna was a bit more scared and hesitant than her outgoing sister. However, Emma helped Anna with the transition and frequently reassured her. Additionally, Anna’s speech was delayed, so at first, she would grow frustrated when Shelley couldn’t understand her.

Now, her speech is on track, and she’s slowly coming out of her shell. Unlike her princess-obsessed sibling, Anna loves super heroes and especially Spider Man.

“To watch her personality grow has been one of the best things,” Shelley said. “She is so sweet, and so funny.”

Also, Emma has had to learn to accept boundaries. Before entering foster care, the girls were neglected, so Emma felt she was in charge. She also felt she had to stash food to reassure herself she and Anna would have something to eat.

Her Arrow foster family, counselors and adoptive family worked with Emma to make her feel safe, and now those things are no longer an issue.

It has been about two years since the family adopted the girls, and they are doing incredibly well. They’re smart, funny and well-adjusted, and Shelley feels lucky to have them in her life.

“Our case was a fairy tale,” she said.

*The girls’s names were changed to protect their privacy at the request of their family.

Trautner fam — Christina and Laura Trautner talk about how their relationship has grown since Laura first became part of the family.

Our friends at Campus Crusade for Christ, or Cru, recently wrote this awesome story about one of Arrow’s kids! Christina entered foster care at 10, and was adopted by an Arrow family, the Trautners, at age 12. Since then, the Trautner’s have helped Christina heal and brought her out of her shell. Now a confident high school student, Christina is leading Bible studies with her cross country team at Kingwood Park High School. We are so proud of her! Below is the article Ross McCall wrote about Christina and her family, in which they give some very good advice to foster families. To find out how you can make a difference in the life of a child, like the Trautner’s did for Christina, visit www. www.arrow.org/foster.

Christina Trautner was 10 years old when a woman from Child Protection Services arrived at her door. “You have to leave your family because we are taking you to live with another family,” she said. “You have one hour to gather what you most want to take with you.”

Choosing some clothes and her favorite soft toys, Christina had just enough to fill a bucket. Clutching her favorite toy tight to her chest, she climbed into the CPS worker’s car and sat, silently, as she was driven to a family who had chosen to foster her. The CPS worker asked her questions as they drove, but Christina refused to break her silence, afraid of the future.

“When she arrived she just looked small in every sense,” says Laura Trautner, the woman Christina would eventually dare to call Mom. “We had told the CPS that we thought we were best suited to fostering a child who needed to be brought out, helped to flourish, rather than one that needed reigning in.”

Over the past six years Laura, a staff member with Cru, and her husband John, who teaches at his daughter’s high school, have patiently created a home for Christina – a safe place where she’d have the opportunities her birth home would never afford her.

The specific things they emphasized can help any child step into their calling.

Unconditional acceptance
Christina’s background is a painful story, but she has reached a point where she can talk about her past openly because she never felt judged by the family God eventually chose for her.

Be present
Christina’s early life was characterized by parental neglect. She says she spent most of her time at home watching television with her younger brother. Having an adopted family who wanted to spend meaningful time with her, and lots of it, helped her to begin feeling precious to them.

Provide clear boundaries
Laura Trautner says that providing clear boundaries for Christina from the beginning provided her with security and begin to navigate a future that initially created inevitable anxiety for her.

Create plentiful opportunities
Christina says, “When I came to live with the Trautners, I was closed off. Mom encouraged me and gave me support to try new things. I had never had the opportunity to try out for a sport. She told me about the benefits of trying out for the swim team, something she had done herself.”

Trust, trust, trust
“There’s nothing my mom and I can’t talk about,” says Christina. She strives to show her parents they can trust her with schoolwork, and with all the normal decisions a high school girl faces each day. This trustworthiness was rooted in the confidence her parents placed in her first.

At age 12, Christina stood in a courtroom before a judge who asked her, “Do you choose this family to be your family from here on?”

“I do,” Christina replied. Laura remembers the moment vividly, describing it as feeling like a marriage.

“My mom wanted to choose something to place on a charm bracelet to signify their adoption of me,” says Christina. “Then we found a jigsaw piece that fit perfectly. Mom told me that our family had been incomplete without me, I was the missing piece in the puzzle.”

Flourishing in God’s call

A year ago, Laura and Christina decided joined a group of Cru staff and high school students from Houston on a spring break trip to Hungary.

As they befriended Budapest high schoolers, Christina remembers meeting girls she describes as, “model-like.” “But I would ask them, ‘Is there anything you would like to change about yourself,’ and they would reply ‘everything.’”

Christina wanted to help those girls recognize how treasured they were by God, but knew she needed to first believe that more deeply about herself.

Christina brought the lessons of the Hungary trip home to Kingwood Park High School outside Houston, where her mom works for Cru’s high school ministry. She brought the change in her own life into a place where she sees girls sitting alone in the cafeteria or walking in the athletics corridor, painfully self-conscious.

“I was never comfortable in the Athletics Corridor, then I felt God telling me to join the cross-country team, that he was going to use me there,” says Christina. Her adopted father John is a keen runner. Christina recently led her first Bible study with her cross-country teammates. She was nervous, but knows she’s become a safe place for other students.

Ana Acosta is one of Christina’s closest friends. “I think a lot of people inside the school try to fit in. They don’t act like themselves at school,” says Ana. “Christina’s the same inside or outside school. She doesn’t really care what people say or think about her, and that’s helped me throughout my high school years.”

Her experiences have created a passion in Christina to eventually work with kids in foster care. She says her Mom gets emotional thinking about how amazing it is that she wants to help people who are where she was, rather than never going back there.

Kingwood Park High School is changing along with a student and a family God labeled ‘chosen.’

A recent graduate of the Arrow Center for Education in Maryland felt so transformed by his time at the school that he wanted to give a graduation speech that summed up his feelings.

“Whatever it was that brought you to Arrow is not who you are, or who you have to be,” he told the crowd of graduates, family and friends at the graduation ceremony last month.

The Arrow Center for Education, or ACE, is a private separate day school that provides specialized education to children who have demonstrated difficulty with school in mainstream settings. There are two campuses—one in Baltimore and the other in Bel Air.

The student, a foster child who had been through so much in his young life, struggled with behavioral and academic problems, but at ACE, he was given the individualized attention he needed to complete high school. When he was finally able move past the negative aspects that brought him to ACE, he developed into a “funny, clever, friendly young man,” according to Principal Sue Barnes.

That graduate is just one of the many success stories ACE has had since it opened in 1996, and the program continues to grow and develop. For the upcoming school year, ACE will offer an expanded reading program, aimed at students who are performing significantly below grade level.

Sue said high school students tend to use context clues to cover up the fact that they can’t read. For instance, even if they don’t know the some words in a sentence, they may be able to figure out its meaning by the surrounding words and sentences. This can be a good thing to a point, but becomes problematic if the students don’t understand the majority of the words, and misinterpret the text. At ACE, staff will work to identify students who need extra help, and those students will be enrolled in the Wilson Reading Program. The program will give identified students one-on-one lessons for 30 minutes a day using highly structured, evidence-based strategies.

Additionally, ACE is adding two new electives—foreign languages and graphic design.

The foreign languages elective will be especially beneficial toward students who wish to pursue a four-year college education after high school, while the graphic design elective will give students hands-on experience in a fully-equipped computer lab, and will help students develop skills for opportunities in Information Technology careers.

The Wilson Reading Program and new electives are just a few of the exciting ways ACE is making a difference in the lives of vulnerable young people. To learn more about ACE, visit

Arrow mom’s Facebook post goes viral

Arrow adoptive mom Charity Robinson and her son Lincoln appeared on Fox and Friends after a photo of Lincoln making a new friend touched the hearts of tens of thousands of people on social media!

Charity snapped the photo of Lincoln playing with Jason Taylor, a local pastor who was sitting near the family at the rodeo, and shared it on her Facebook page with this message:

Dear stranger next to us at the rodeo,
When my son came up to you and grabbed your arm, you didn’t know he used to be terrified of people. When he talked to you about the bulls, you didn’t know he was diagnosed with a language disorder. When he jumped in your lap and laughed as you tickled him, you didn’t know he had a sensory processing disorder. You also didn’t know as his mother, I sat in my seat, with tears running down my face, sneaking this photo. When we adopted him a few short months ago, we didn’t know how long it would take for him to laugh, play and engage others like this. You didn’t know any of this, but you took time to connect with a child who has had to fight to learn to connect. My heart is full. Thank you.

The Robinsons are such a special family, and we are so proud of the progress Lincoln has made!

Every parent needs a break from the kids once in a while, but for foster parents, finding childcare can be challenging.

For foster parents wanting to get away for more than a few hours, a certified respite care provider is required. Respite care providers take all the same classes and trainings as foster parents, but unlike foster parents, they only take in children for a couple of days, up to two weeks. Unfortunately, there just aren’t a lot of these part-time foster parents to go around.

That was the experience of Dawn and Roy Delgatty during their 20 years as foster parents.

“Respite care was essential to keeping our… dare I say our sanity?” said Dawn. “But we found it very difficult to find respite providers.”

When they did find respite care, it was often with another foster family. However, sometimes that was a challenge as well. For instance, if a foster family is licensed for three children, and has three children in the home already, they would not be able to provide respite care.

Dawn and Roy have retired from full-time foster care, but recently became recertified in order to be respite care providers to foster families in their community, in part because of their own experiences.

“We decided to do it as a ministry,” Dawn said. “Our church is quite involved with Arrow, and foster care and adoption.”

By providing respite care for foster families in their church, the Dalgattys can provide consistency for those families’ foster kids, and be a positive influence in their lives. Dawn and Roy are excited to look after their first respite kids next month!

If you feel called to get involved with foster care, but don’t feel you’re in a position to be a full-time foster parent, respite care could be right for you. To learn more, click the link below and scroll down to “Part-Time Fostering.”

https://www.arrow.org/services-programs/foster-care/becoming-foster-parent/

Keith Howard, our State Director in the Panhandle, doesn’t just talk the talk when it comes to foster care and adoption– he walks the walk. Keith recently finalized the adoption of four siblings. The same kids who are now part of his family came to our Amarillo shelter just months prior to their placement in Keith’s home. In this blog post, Keith recalls how the kids came to the shelter, and how sometimes it takes a little compassion and sacrifice to ensure the best for our kids!

It had been a busy week and I was very ready for the weekend. In fact, it was 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and things were beginning to wrap up nicely so I could go home. That is when the phone call came in. The call from the state asking if the emergency shelter our organization ran had room for 4 children. I looked at the schedule for the weekend and quickly realized we would be out of compliance on 3 shifts and we had no one to fill those gaps. Well almost no one, there was me. Knowing I was the only option, I put the worker on hold and this is what came next. (brutal honesty)

Me: Jesus, what should I do? I’ve worked all week and I’m ready for the weekend!!!!

Jesus: (not audibly, but very profoundly) Are we really having this conversation about your weekend being disrupted? These children have had their whole lives disrupted. You know what to do.

I picked up the phone and told the worker we would accept the children into our shelter. I then called my wife and asked her to go pick up pizza’s for the children in the shelter, because I had just taken these new children and I was headed to the shelter to keep it in compliance until 11:00 PM. My wife’s mom happened to be in town, so Staci ran and picked up pizza’s and even brought ingredients for making cookies. She served beside me that night and was there when the children arrived at our shelter.

Fast forward two months. We now had our foster care license and we were preparing to take children into our own home. Our plan of keeping sibling groups of 2-3 together had now become a plan to keep a sibling group of 4 together. Can you guess which 4??

Yep, the 4 I almost didn’t take, because we didn’t have the staff and I didn’t want my weekend to be inconvenienced by working. But, instead I said ‘yes’ and now 21 months later those 4 incredibly awesome and precious children still live in our home and are a big part of our family. We have no idea what the future holds, but we are thankful we said ‘yes’, even though my selfishness clearly wanted to say ‘no!!!’.

What will your ‘yes’ be? Your ‘yes’ might just be what the world is needing today.

For more than 20 years, Arrow foster mom Carroll Powell has been saving siblings from the trauma of being split apart by opening her home to them.

Due to the shortage of foster homes that take in sibling groups, siblings are separated from each other in foster care 75 percent of the time. This can compound the trauma these children are already experiencing from abuse and neglect. Children who are kept with siblings in foster care report feeling safer and more supported than those who are separated from their brothers and sisters.

“They’re already being pulled apart from their parents,” Carroll said. “They need something to hold on to.”

Carroll received her first placement of siblings in 1994. One of those children was Michael, a rambunctious second grader who was far behind in school, especially reading. Because of the stability and discipline Carroll provided, Michael not only learned to read, but caught up in school and graduated. After developing skills in carpentry, landscaping and beyond, Michael is putting his talents to good use in the Arrow facilities department.

“As you grow up, you start feeling different about things,” Michael said. “You have to see where you were and where you are now. I just realized there has got to be a greater purpose in this life. There has to be a reason I’m here. Arrow changed my life.”

Carroll is now taking care of a sibling group of three, all of whom have special needs ranging from ADHD to bipolar disorder. She has fostered them for almost 10 years. She said the job can be tough, but it is worth it to help these children, who have endured terrible trauma in their young lives.

“You have to stop and think,” Carroll said. “These children have taken a blow. They’re dealing with the way society looks at them. These babies didn’t ask for any of that.”

She said it’s important to never give up on foster children. Foster parents are supposed to be their advocates—the people they can rely on to have their best interests at heart, she said. It may take a while, but inevitably, a calm comes over a foster child once they begin to trust you and feel safe.

“I get children that have been jumped around, and it messes them up,” Carroll said. “Parents let go for silly little reasons. The kids are going to act out, but you have to hang on. You wouldn’t let go of your own children, and these are my kids because I am their voice.”

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